Bill Adair | Nieman Journalism Lab

Articles by Bill Adair

Bill Adair is the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University and was the creator of PolitiFact.

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Fact-checking needs a reboot

“‘Informing democracy’ is not enough in an age of rampant lies about elections and public health and climate. Fact-checkers need to be more assertive in getting truthful information to the audience that needs it.”

The year of the fact-check (no, really!)

“Individual checks are now more important than the organizations that produce them.”

The future of fact-checking is all about structured data

“Liars say the same things over and over, which makes the fact-check we wrote last week or last month valuable for an extended period.”

A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song

“In campaigns around the country, there will be fewer exaggerations and falsehoods. Politicians will try to out-do each other by bragging about their good records for Pinocchios and Truth-O-Meter ratings.”

Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods

“He’s like an indestructible monster in a Godzilla movie. The authorities keep firing at him, but he just keeps walking through town, gaining power.”

November 27, 2018

The red couch experiments: Early lessons in pop-up fact-checking

“People have long mused about live fact-checking on television, but this marked the first in-depth study. It revealed our product could have tremendous appeal — but we need to explain it better to our users.”

The year of the fact-checking bot

“The falsehoods will continue, but the bots will be a force multiplier to provide people with the truth.”

June 6, 2016

What happens when a 50-something journalist gets a week’s worth of news from Snapchat Discover?

The founder of PolitiFact finds distracting soundtracks and stale headlines, but also a fair amount of lively and effective content.

Pants, burning

“Candidates will ignore a lot of the truth-squadding — except when they can use it to attack their opponents. (Politicians hate fact-checking, except when they love it!)”